A Moment of Extreme Self-Awareness

It's a couple of days until pitchers and catchers report!  So not only am I using MATLAB to do calculations on a 2,386x9 matrix (it takes over a minute to create this matrix) so I can take guesses at each teams' winning percentages, but I am also doing a quick look over each depth chart to take some guesses based off gut instinct.  This isn't about my thoughts on the whole (Washington and Atlanta may be among the most complete teams I have ever seen, but I am totally biased) but rather something I noticed when looking at one specific team.  Lets see if you notice it as immediately as I do.

Do you see it?  If you don't, allow me to zoom in.

Yes, the New York Yankees bullpen is currently no more than just Mariano Rivera all on his own.  This might be one of the best managerial decisions I have ever seen!  They have effectively been just Mariano Rivera for over a decade now, not only that, but I could go even further and say their bullpen has been Mariano Rivera's cutter for the last decade.  Why not just accept this fact and cut everybody from the team and let him stand alone, the man is easily the best relief pitcher in history, and even though he spent all of last year on the DL, even though I am a Red Sox fan, even though he is 43 years old, I can say that it is more than likely the best closer in baseball.  This frightens me to no end, and I really wish they would try to go into the season with this setup for two reasons.  First, I am imagining the random cuts to the bullpen that are often showed in TV broadcasts and you just see Rivera sitting all alone with his bullpen catcher shooting the shit, not another soul to be seen.  Second, it makes it a little bit easier to watch the following video and pretend its Joe Girardi singing instead of Michael Bolton.

(Note: I wanted to go with this video originally)

This has done nothing but get me even more excited for baseball season starting back up, I'll be back with my results on my predictions when they are finished and I might even talk about the WBC if I can manage to find a way to watch it.  Goodbye everybody, and wonder to yourself, how are you supposed to live without Mariano Rivera?